(snip)
First, nuclear weapons would be launched into space under the
cover of a civilian mission. The government responsible could later
claim that the satellite or Martian probe had been lost in an
accident.
(end snip)

ASTEROIDS could be used to destroy enemy cities in what
astronomers describe as a deadly game of “cosmic golf”. Lumps of rock weighing millions of tons could be nudged out of their
normal orbit and guided towards particular cities on Earth by a
string of nuclear explosions.

The process is likened to golf because it takes several nuclear
“shots” to hit the asteroid into its target “hole”. The final putt would
cause an explosion 50,000 times larger than the Hiroshima bomb
and obliterate a region the size of Belgium. The perpetrators could
escape blame for an apparent natural disaster.

This novel form of star wars is within the scope of current
technology, according to research by David Asher, of Armagh
Observatory, and Nigel Holloway, a member of Spaceguard UK,
an organisation that monitors asteroids.

“It is a sort of deadly cosmic golf, played with an odd-shaped
ball,” said Dr Holloway, a former military scientist at the Atomic
Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston. “It is very difficult to get
a hole in one, or even to make a par five, but it is a pretty simple
thing to get the ball to the hole in 15.”

The astronomers, using a computer model, have calculated that a
rogue state or terrorist group could steer a known asteroid, called
1998 HH49, on to Telford, Shropshire, using an average of 15
nuclear explosions. The operation, which would also destroy cities
as far apart as Manchester and Birmingham, would cost less than
the $100 billion spent on the International Space Station and
Britain would never know that it was under attack.

First, nuclear weapons would be launched into space under the
cover of a civilian mission. The government responsible could later
claim that the satellite or Martian probe had been lost in an
accident.

Next, the warheads would be stacked up in orbit around an
asteroid about 200 metres wide. Each weapon would be landed
on the asteroid and detonated over the course of 18 months to
alter its orbit so that, eventually, it was lined up with a target point
on Earth. The final aligning blast could be delayed until a month
before impact. “A leader would have a chance to abort the plan
until almost the last moment,” Dr Holloway said.

Clever planning would ensure that no one on Earth would know
what was happening. The explosions could be detonated while the
Sun stood between the Earth and the asteroid, making the blasts
invisible to observers on this planet; a hitherto uncharted asteroid
could be selected so that its altered orbit would not be detected.

Dr Holloway said: “There are all sorts of ways of covering your
tracks. Everyone would assume this was an act of God, when it
was nothing of the sort.

“Who would disbelieve you if you said that your latest mission to
Mars had been an embarrassing loss, when it was actually carrying
a cluster of weapons ready to start the real job of diverting a
chosen asteroid to devastate an unfriendly nation? You would be
squeaky clean, with no risk of retaliation from your target.”

The best way to prevent such a scenario, Dr Holloway said, was
to invest in better methods of tracking asteroids so that any change
in orbit would be swiftly detected. Nuclear weapons could then be
used to divert the asteroid away from Earth.

Such measures would also reduce the risk of a catastrophic natural
asteroid impact of the sort that led to the extinction of the
dinosaurs.

In their computer simulations, Dr Holloway and Dr Asher
managed to land asteroid 1998 HH49 on a spot within 100 miles
of Telford 30 times out of 40 attempts, using no more than 15
nuclear “putts”. Five of the efforts that missed Telford still hit the
United Kingdom, with another five missing altogether. In one case,
it took ten shots to hit the target.

The resulting impact would have had a force of 1,000 megatonnes
of TNT — 50,000 times the size of the bomb dropped on
Hiroshima, and 15 times larger than the biggest hydrogen bomb
ever tested. Everything within a 60-mile radius would have been
destroyed, with serious damage throughout England and Wales
and more than 10 million deaths.

“We have nothing against Telford, it happened to be near the
middle and we had its position on file,” Dr Holloway said. “But it
demonstrates how easy this would be to achieve.”